CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“Shall we talk?” The smile on Tassos’s face was both empty and cruel.

A hard lump sat in the back of Caledonia’s throat as she returned her attention to Tassos. Clenching her teeth against a sudden desire to vomit, she raised her chin.

“I’m here to offer an alliance against Lir.” Caledonia let cold anger clip her words into daggers.

Behind Tassos, Cepheus smiled, her lips curling in a practiced sneer. It was then, when her lips pulled tight, that Caledonia saw they, too, were laced with delicate orange scars, as though sliced with something as thin as a butterfly’s wings.

“Ah,” Tassos said, as if this were news. “I’m not interested.”

One turn ago, that answer would have brought Caledonia to her rage. She’d have countered hotly without a care for what happened next, because what happened next would have affected her and her crew alone. Not a fleet.

Not the entire Bullet Seas.

She let the sea air fill her lungs, let it cool her from the inside. Tassos didn’t think he had anything to gain from an alliance with her, and she was going to prove him wrong.

“I think you are,” she said.

“Do you? What do you have to recommend you?” Tassos folded his arms across his chest. The move was calculated to make him bigger and more imposing. “You stood against Aric, but it wasn’t you who defeated him, was it? Not really. Lir did that for you.”

“We both benefited from what Lir did,” she answered. “You got the Net, after all.”

“And you got—or I should say had—Cloudbreak. Lir tried to come for me and he failed. He’ll try again, but I suspect you’ll take priority now that you’ve emerged from hiding. So, tell me again, what do I possibly have to gain from allying with Lir’s next target?”

As he spoke, Caledonia could feel Oran bristling at her side. Behind her, her crew watched with a kind of intensity that pressed against her back like many hands holding her up. Tassos wanted her to feel small, but Caledonia wouldn’t do what any Fiveson wanted.

Taking a measured step forward, Caledonia dropped her voice, forcing Tassos to pay attention and cutting their crews out of the conversation. “I know what you need most in the world right now.”

Tassos narrowed his eyes. “And what is that?”

Caledonia leaned in, the first taste of blood on the tip of her tongue as she said a single word: “Silt.”

Doubt sliced Tassos’s eyes while want curled his fingers into fists. He wanted what she offered to be real, she could see that plainly. But more than that, he needed it to be.

“You have Silt?” His eyes tripped from her to the deck of her ship, skating over her crew as if one of them would reveal the truth. “You don’t have Silt.”

“No, I don’t have Silt,” she admitted. “But I can help you get it.”

“I don’t need your help.” Tassos pulled back. “We can fight this war without you, and when we’re done, I’ll crush your fleet without a second thought.”

There was no denying that Tassos outnumbered and outgunned her, but he was still here, standing suspended over the ocean between their ships. And that meant he thought there was something she could give him.

“You’re running out of your drug. Lir is, too. Two weeks ago, I destroyed a massive crop of baleflowers—from what was one Fiveson Decker’s AgriFleet. The Bullets in that fleet were already on reduced rations and I’m willing to bet the AgriFleet doesn’t have many barges of that size left. If any. That means one of you is going to break very soon.” She looked into the eastern horizon, toward the Holster. “If Lir has more than you, all he has to do is wait you out and attack when your fleet is in withdrawal. Do you think that’s a fight you can win? Maybe I should do the same. Wait and see which of you emerges as an actual threat. Which of you shrivels into something too weak to hold a gun.”

The ensuing silence stretched thin. Tassos studied her intently, searching for the lie that was not there.

“Can you say for certain it will be you?” Caledonia allowed herself a second to appreciate the way the muscles flashed in the Fiveson’s jaw. “I can tell you why it won’t be. You might be secure for the moment, but the only thing you really control is the factory on the other side of the Net. You have neither the existing blossoms nor the seeds to grow them, and you’ll need both very soon. Maybe you already do.”

When Tassos didn’t immediately refute her claims, she continued, emboldened.

“Lir has blossoms and seeds. All he needs to do is figure out how to produce those pills you rely on and he’ll have you. Your Bullets will figure that out sooner than you think.” She paused, noting the new flush in his cheeks. “Or, we can work together, and both get what we want.”

“How?” Suspicion clouded his voice. Suspicion and just a sliver of desperation.

Now Caledonia let a humorless smile bend her lips. “We combine our fleets and take the Holster. We win and whatever seeds and bale barges we find are yours.”

“And what do you get?” he asked.

“I keep the Holster,” she answered. “And Lir is mine.”

Tassos’s gaze grew distant as he considered the strategy, playing it through to ensure he could get what he wanted from the deal.

“Why do I need you to take the Holster?” he asked at last. “You and your . . . nineteen ships, is it? Not much of a fleet.”

“You need me because all you’ve ever done is protect that Net.” Caledonia had been prepared for this argument. Here, she was on solid footing. “You may be good with defense, but if you want to hit Lir where he lives, then you need an offensive strategy. And you won’t find better than me.”

Tassos almost smiled, considering her as though seeing her for the first time. Finally, he shook his head. “Even with the seeds, we still need the means to grow them. We need soil, and that’s kept in Slipmark. You can’t get me what I need. No deal.”

The wind gusted between them and the ships rocked steeply together as if even the ocean wanted them to join hands. Frustration gnawed at Caledonia’s throat, but she swallowed it down. She had one final card to play and no one was going to like it. No one except Tassos.

“Soiltech,” she said. “I have it and if you agree to fight, if you help me take the Holster, it’s yours. I’ll let you walk away with the means to produce your own Silt.”

Oran went rigid at her side. Tassos had also tensed, though for different reasons. Silt was at the root of every piece of this fight, the toxic center from which everything else bloomed. It was so powerful it controlled everyone it touched. Perhaps especially Lir and Tassos. They both held such power, but they were also terrified that without that poisoned powder, they’d have none.

“Show me.” Tassos was ready to call her bluff and walk away, but she could see he wanted her to be telling the truth almost as much as he wanted to deliver her fleet to the bottom of the ocean.

Caledonia turned to her waiting crew. They were stone-faced and tense, their hands resting near holstered weapons.

She nodded at Pisces. “Bring me the soiltech.”

The hesitation in Pisces’s expression was there and gone almost as quickly as the young woman herself. She returned in a minute, their only functioning soiltech device clutched in one hand and a canvas sack of bleached soil in the other as Nettle watched with a pinched expression.

“Show him.”

Pisces activated the device with the press of a button. It flared with pale green light as she emptied the contents of her sack over it. White soil filtered through the sieve and when it emerged on the other side, it was a dark, healthy brown scattering in the wind.

Not even Tassos could hide his pleasure, his mouth parted in delighted surprise. Cepheus went still, her eyes tracking Pisces. Oran made no sound, but Caledonia could feel his frustration.

“Do we have a deal?” Caledonia asked.

Tassos stuck out his hand. “We have a deal. We’ll work together to take the Holster and in return, you deliver your soiltech and a blueprint for replication.”

Caledonia thrust her hand into his, feeling new bruises where he’d gripped her just moments ago. They pinched less painfully than the guilt she felt when she said, “Deal.”

With a quick jerk of his hand, Tassos tugged her close, putting his face so near to hers she could smell the too-sweet notes of Silt on his skin. “And after that,” he said. “I’ll gun you down if you so much as blink in my direction.”